The clowns from corporate head office are here: GERALD, a Fringe review

Gerald (Stage 20, Mile Zero Dance Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

The outreach department of Gerald Corp, one of the galaxy’s biggest energy companies, has sent two recruiters through space to find us humans.

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Lucky us! We’ve been chosen as corporate research subjects and possible employees (could this because of our distinguished Fringe history of compliance to audience participation instructions?). Anyhow, the crack(ed) team of Bill (Lauren Brady, SWAN?, @interWEBBED, OWEaDebt) and Dill (Eddie McDonald) has arrived to assess our suitability for a bright corporate future. And we in turn can be materially helpful to their potential rise through the corporate ranks at ever-expanding Gerald Corp. Could be a win-win.

Satires of corporate culture, and the way it turns human ambition against itself, aren’t exactly rare in theatre. In fact, it isn’t easy to think of any performance art odes that actually celebrate corporate compliance. It’s demonstrably more fun, though when the enforcers of corporate orthodoxy are clowns, those naturally playful, wayward, renegade spirits.

And this GERALD pair is from somewhere out there, attached to the corporate machine by long light-up leashes. Bill, the team supervisor, is the bossier, more hard-nosed one, getting more exasperated by the second with a genial dimbulb of an assistant. Gill is the more amiable, distractable, impulsive one, who lives for the corporate juice breaks provided by Gerald. (Bent Stick Brewing Co., incidentally, opposite  Mile Zero on Beer Street, has created Gerald Juice, in their honour). Their classic clown chemistry is funny.

In the course of GERALD, the pair enlist audience members for kooky challenges, surveys and activities to test us. Balloons are involved. This kind of larky, improvised, unthreatening audience participation, I’m here to tell you, is something you can easily say Yes too, no squirming required. And just like that, you’ve joined a corporate cult. Wheee.